


I Don't Want To Be Alone (When These Bones Decay)

by joidianne4eva



Category: In the Flesh (TV), Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:41:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joidianne4eva/pseuds/joidianne4eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mickey rose there was nothing but hunger, hunger and something else that made him claw at the darkness around him until his fingers caught against a wooden surface inches away from his face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Want To Be Alone (When These Bones Decay)

**Author's Note:**

> This is an In The Flesh crossover so there will be zombies. Massive thanks to el_gilliath for the aftermath beta!

When Mickey rose there was nothing but hunger, hunger and something else that made him claw at the darkness around him until his fingers caught against a wooden surface inches away from his face.

From there it was easy, the instinct to dig and claw driving him even as dirt poured onto his face. His fingers were caked with mud and there was more dirt than air in his lungs by the time he reached the surface.

Stumbling from the hole that they’d stuck him in was easy compared to what had come before but Mickey didn’t linger like the others that he could see, draped over their gravestones.

There was a hunger clawing at his stomach and it was echoed by the pain in his chest that had him lurching forwards and out of the cemetery.

It was like being drunk but Mickey knew he wasn’t drunk…just like he knew that he shouldn’t be here.

He remembered the hatred on Terry’s face when he turned the gun on him. He remembered the searing pain followed by another gunshot and a scream but then….nothing.

There was something that he was forgetting, something important but Mickey couldn’t focus on that as he trudged along, his body listing to the side every so often.

The streets were empty except for a few of the ones that smelled like him and Mickey grunted as he caught sight of the Kash and Grab.

Stumbling forwards he pressed his fingers to the shop’s metal shutters and grunted but nothing happened.

He didn’t know why he thought something would happen.

Pressing his back to the shutters Mickey slid down them until he was sitting with his head braced on his knees.

Around him he could hear the grunts of the others but he didn’t move, not even when the gunshots started…or the screams.

Mickey didn’t know how long he sat there but when he opened his eyes he realized that he wasn’t alone.

There was a man standing across the road staring at him and Mickey was stumbling to his feet in an instant.

The man didn’t move as he came closer, only tilted his head to watch him. The streetlight gave his hair the illusion of fire and Mickey almost collided with him as something sparked in his head.

**_Ian, Ian, Ian._ **

The mantra didn’t stop even when Mickey curled his fingers in the tattered suit that the man was wearing.

*O*

Mandy exhaled slowly through her nose as she watched the street. The vaccine was working, faster than the injections and the fact that it was airborne meant that it affected more people and made it easier to round them up.

The rising had been bad but the intel from the UK kept it from being the clusterfuck that it could’ve been.

People were stockpiling vaccines in case they found a corpse that they knew and other people were stockpiling bullets in case they met one that they wished they hadn’t known.

Mandy had been on the streets every night since they released the vaccine which was the same night that she found her brother and Ian’s empty graves.

Nobody she spoke to had seen them but Ian and Mickey knew these streets, if they didn’t want to be found they wouldn’t be. The thought that perhaps they’d left the city was one that had been brought up before but Mandy wasn’t even going to think that way.

The sound of a can rattling across the concrete made Mandy’s thoughts shatter, fingers tightening on her gun because the cured risen weren’t the only things out here and the last thing she wanted was to run into a fucking rabid one.

The thought had barely formed root when she saw them.

Ian was too tall to miss, even if it wasn’t for his hair. She remembered the way that he’d looked in his casket….like he’d just been asleep. Mickey had looked the same and the real reason why Mandy had cried was because Mickey had had to fucking die to find any peace all because of their asshole of a father.

Ian took another step forward and Mandy was too far away to hear what he said to Mickey who was all but hidden in Ian’s shadow but she could tell that he was talking which meant that the cure had worked.

In the moonlight Ian’s skin seemed to glow, hell he’d already been pale but now it was like someone had leached the colour from everything except his hair. Mickey wasn’t much better, not that Mandy could see much with how close he was standing to Ian.

Mickey shifted even closer to the redhead and Mandy must have made a sound when she caught sight of the way that Mickey was clinging to Ian’s clothes because Ian’s head snapped up, pale eyes meeting hers across the space between them.

“Mandy?”

Ian’s voice was rough and Mandy had to swallow past the lump in her own throat before she answered him.

“Where the fuck have you shitheads been? Do you know how long I’ve been freezing my tits off looking for you?”

Mickey made a strange sound behind Ian that made Mandy freeze because Ian had spoken but Mickey hadn’t and speech was one of the things they were told to watch for to know whether they were dealing with a potential rabid or not.

“Fuck you, bitch. We went home,”

Mandy’s breath shuddered from her chest at the sound of Mickey’s voice even as she rolled her eyes because of fucking course they went to the one place no one expected them to go. After all, who the hell wanted to see the place where they were killed?

“Yeah well, that place hasn’t been h-home for a while,” Mandy responded lightly, ignoring the way that her voice broke midway through. Their house hadn’t been a home since the second that she’d realized how much of a monster Terry had really been.

“We couldn’t stay on the streets. We didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Ian told her and Mandy nodded because that was Ian in a nutshell.

“Enough of the chit chat, you bringing us home or not?” Mickey cut in and Mandy could hear the desperation in his voice so she just gestured for them to follow here but not before flipping Mickey the bird just to hear him laugh.

They weren’t ok, not yet because the vaccine wasn’t perfect and she knew there were people who would give them shit for being what they were but they’d get there.

This was their second chance and Mandy would fucking gut anyone who tried to mess it up.

 


End file.
